The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig

Author:Michael Honig
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2016-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

11

JUST AS STEPANIN HAD promised, chicken Georgian style arrived on Vladimir’s lunch tray the next day. Sheremetev wasn’t there to witness this miracle of modern peacemaking. It was his day off, and he had gone to visit Oleg. Vladimir was being looked after by the relief nurse, Vera. Vladimir had no recognition of her, although she had been coming for almost two years now. He usually thought she was his mother.

Vera worked occasional shifts in a hospital in Odintsovo, as well as doing private work, such as the weekly shift covering for Sheremetev. She was a single mother of two, abandoned by a husband who, from her account, was a drunken womaniser with bad breath and strong body odour. From the stories Vera told, Sheremetev had built a picture in his mind almost of a beggar lying in a gutter with a bottle of rotgut and his hand out trying to cadge a kopeck or two from the people stepping over him. It had been a genuine surprise when Vera let slip one day that he was a pharmacist with a shop in Odintsovo. It also eventuated that his abandonment involved an orderly divorce, support payments for the children and regular contact with the kids, aged eleven and eight.

Still, Sheremetev was quite fond of Vera – who was more than fond of him. She was loud, over-made up, and opinionated, but funny, warm and generous, and the hair-raising stories about her ex-husband were always told with a certain knowing, tongue-in-cheek humour. Early on, she had coyly admitted to Sheremetev that she found small men attractive, even batting her eyelids as she spoke, and each week, when she took over from him, she always insinuated that he must be off to visit a lady love, while at the same time managing to convey that she knew perfectly well that he wasn’t, but that if he was interested in such a thing . . .

Sheremetev was supposed to have a full twenty-four hours off, with Vera staying to cover for him overnight, but he always came back after dinner, or even before, and let her leave. Vladimir’s disorientation was greater at night, and if he was to awake and find an unfamiliar face trying to calm him, it was likely to send him off into a full blown episode that only the security men and an injection of tranquilliser would be able to quell.

Vera had arrived at ten. ‘Where are you off to today, Kolya?’ she asked. ‘Just once, I’d love to come with you. But I suppose,’ she said, her eyes twinkling with innuendo, ‘that would be inconvenient.’

‘Particularly because if you did come with me, there’d be no one to look after Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ replied Sheremetev drily.

Vera laughed.

‘I won’t be late, Verochka.’

‘With you, it would never be too late,’ she said suggestively. She paused, letting the double entendre sink in, then laughed.

There was no bus on the road that led to the dacha. Sometimes Eleyekov or his son, if they were heading to town, gave Sheremetev a lift.

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